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People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran Photos

Maryam Rajavi speaks of hope and freedom

“Despite the most barbaric suppression, the Iranian people have never submitted to the clerical regime”, said Maryam Rajavi, the President elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, on the anniversary of, The February Revolution. This monumental uprising represented the Iranian people’s resolve for change, however buried by Khomeini’s deception. For Mrs Rajavi, it was a people’s revolution, where they did not surrender, nor did they accept humiliation. Because of this, it was necessary to pay homage to the martyrs of this great event, in the history or Iran.

Mrs Rajavi, expressed how these martyrs symbolized faithfulness to one’s commitment and embodied the Iranian people’s uncompromising stance, whose aspirations and demands have been suppressed for the past 36 years. However, they have still not abandoned their cries for freedom, so that one day the oppressive regime would be erased once and for all.

On this anniversary of the February revolution, it was important for Mrs Rajavi, to focus on why the Iranian regime was still surviving, despite the strongest efforts by the people to topple it. She highlighted the mullahs’ strategy to pursue their nuclear program and exporting terrorism and fundamentalism to Iraq and Syria. However, she was adamant over the fact that the Iranian people would be successful in overcoming this obstacle. For this, the Iranian Resistance relying on its main force, the PMOI (People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran), was providing a specific platform with more than three decades of struggle, and was the sole democratic alternative to this regime.

For Mrs Rajavi, the first and most important necessary step to confront extremism under the banner of Islam was to evict this regime from Iraq and Syria. She mentioned how partnering with the mullahs’ regime in the coalition against the ISIS was a hundred times more dangerous than Islamic fundamentalism, whether Shiite or Sunni. The Iranian regime’s 36-year record of atrocities, especially the crimes against members of the PMOI at Camp Ashraf and the massacre of political prisoners in 1988, must be referred to the international criminal court by the United Nations. Mrs Rajavi for this demanded that the world community impose comprehensive sanctions on this regime and expel its agents and terrorists. Moreover, it must recognize the National Council of Resistance of Iran as the democratic alternative to this regime as well as the provisional government, which would transfer sovereignty to the people of Iran.

One pertinent question that Mrs Rajavi raised was why the mullahs were in such dire need of exporting fundamentalism and terrorism beyond Iran’s borders. Looking at the past years, she concluded that the regime and its accomplices wanted to project their power by committing such meddling in the wars of other countries. For her, this was a distinct feature of the clerical regime.

Even though the regime was still in power, Mrs Rajavi delivered hope in her speech, of it not lasting for very long. She mentioned how Iran’s tumultuous history had again created a situation where “the population is no longer content and those who rule cannot rule over them.” In other words, the time and conditions for change are upon them. For her, the regime would fail because their decadence and inability is reflected in the tensions within the ruling apparatus. They lack a popular base, where if a truly free election is held in Iran, the mullahs and all regime factions will not secure more than a few percent of the vote.

Another important factor that she highlighted about the failures of this regime that has brought the country to the brink of change, was the collapse of Iranian economy and the inability of the regime to contain it. As a result, the relationship between the Iranian people and the ruling regime resembled that of an occupied country.

Mrs Rajavi, ended with a message of courage for the people where all the Iranians could rise up for a free Iran, free elections and the establishment of a pluralist republic on the basis of the separation of church and state. For her, this would only be possible if the society was based on gender equality, an Iran devoid of torture, executions, and removed from the mullahs’ extremist rule.